About Me

I'm a fifty-something male, born and raised in Virginia. Finally found my soul mate at the age of forty three after 2 strike outs and some ugly trips to the plate. I love to play golf, pool, the guitar and poker. I've also become a cyclist. I also love to make things out of wood. I'm currently employed as a sales training director for a health care distributor. I have four kids at various stages of life and plenty of good friends. I also have some friendly acquaintances that are part of my life, too. Sometimes, it's funny and sometimes it's sad but it's always entertaining. And I'm very glad to be here enjoying it.
Why this blog? Well, I'm happier with my life than I've been since I was about 8 years old and I'd like to tell others why just in case they decide they'd like to be that happy, too.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

First Chapter - Take a look!

A minister friend of
mine told me that everyone has at least a couple of good sermons in them.
I've actually delivered one or two at my church over the years that were pretty well
received so, perhaps, she's right.

A professional writer friend of mine told me that everyone has a
book in them. I'm not sure if he is right but, as many others have done,
I started to write one a few years back. It's a collection of short
stories that take place in a pool room. (Remember, Hemingway said to
"write what you know.") So far, I've written about four or five chapters but never taken the time to get any further along.

Anyway, I came across it again and thought I'd post the first
chapter to see what folks think. Your feedback is encouraged.

The Poolroom

Unlike most poolrooms, the distinct,
stale smell of the last 20 years’ cigarettes and cigars was non-existent.Instead of the normal poolroom smell, there
was a vague hint of homemade soup, especially back near the snack bar area.The vegetable soup aroma was, distinctively,
more pronounced based on how hungry you were when you first caught it.

The
only thing that let you know, upon entering, that this was a pool room was the
muted click of the balls running into each other and the occasional crash of a
break beginning another game of eight ball or nine ball. The break sounds would invariably change
depending on the player. Regulars to the
room could tell who was breaking without looking, basing their opinion entirely
on the sound. They could tell whenever a
stranger played, and often how good their game was, judging just by that sound.

The unusual smell in the rest of the
room, the clean office building odor, was the direct result of the poolroom’s
owner watching his father die of lung cancer many years before. His dad, who had taught him the game, was a
heavy smoker for better than thirty years.
He had made his three sons swear they would never touch the “coffin
nails” or work anywhere they might be exposed to it. The youngest son, he was the only one to heed
the admonishment. His two siblings both
smoked light a wet fire, particularly when they played pool. But never in his pool room. No one
did. The sign on the front door spelled
the policy out very clearly. “No smoking
in this pool room under penalty of death….at some point.” For anyone who bothered to ask, he could
relate the story of his father’s slow, torturous and painful death in such a
graphic manner as to cause some to give up the habit, on the spot. The butt can that sat on the sidewalk outside
the front door received all types of detritus as a result, from first puffs to
last drags.

There were other, more subtle ways
the pool room differed from the norm.
Instead of a jukebox, the owner had given up that revenue stream and
installed a quality sound system upon which he played his own choices of
music. Classical and jazz (Miles Davis
and his contemporaries not that Kenny G crap) were two of his favorite genres
but he was just as likely to cue up an old Rolling Stones or Beatles or Lynyrd
Skynyrd album as long as no one was playing one pocket or straight pool; too
much concentration required for those games in his opinion. And the snack bar fare was better suited to a
bed and breakfast. All the cooking was
done on the premises by a former four-star chef who had also been a
professional dietician. He liked to say
that no player could ever blame losing a game on the meal he had eaten there.

There were no games other than pool
in the poolroom. The owner believed in
truth in advertising and the neon sign outside, Pool Room, didn’t lie.
Still, the lighting in the place lent itself to playing other games,
almost too bright for pool. If anyone
came in with chess set in hand or a backgammon board or a deck of cards or a
domino set, they were welcome. So long
as they didn’t interfere with the game and there was room at one of the tables
in the snack bar. And as long as some
sort of food or drink purchases were being made.

Because of the differences in the
atmosphere, players new to the room often had trouble adjusting and regulars
enjoyed, however briefly, a home field advantage. Depending on a player’s normal nicotine
consumption or desire for a particularly greasy food, this home field advantage
could be worth a couple on the wire in a short rack game like 9 ball. In straights, it showed itself in fewer long
runs for visiting players and an increased difficulty in playing adequate
safeties. Regular players of this room
going out to other poolrooms in the city had no problem adjusting; if anything
it was easier to do so. Because of this,
the room’s regulars were respected for their abilities anywhere in town. While this could result in less weight when
arranging a match, the sense of pride in being known as one of the regulars
took away some of the sting. After all,
believing you had something over the other player was always worth a little something.

The owner usually got there around
seven thirty most mornings during the week.
He would immediately start the first pot of coffee and while it was
brewing, scan the newspaper headlines in the main news section. He would carry his cup to the front counter,
pull the previous night’s receipts from the safe and create the deposit. He would then make sure there was enough
change to get through the day, or the weekend if it was a Friday, and head to
the bank across the street.

Returning to the poolroom, he would
refill his coffee cup and begin preparing the room for the day. First, he would remove the table covers from
each of the room’s sixteen tables.
Thirteen of these were regulation nine-foot Brunswick tables of differing styles. (This allowed the owner to act as an area Brunswick dealer, showing
potential customers the look and feel of particular tables. He averaged about two table sales per month
the profits of which more than paid the rent on the building.) There were also two twelve-foot snooker
tables and a ten-foot, three-cushion billiards table. These were rare in the city, or any city for
that matter. It gave the poolroom one
more differentiation over its competitors.
After carefully folding all the covers and storing them in the cabinet
behind the front counter, he would take a small, portable vacuum cleaner and
run it gently over the table playing surfaces.
This would remove chalk dust and talcum powder from the prior day’s
players and help create a perfect playing surface for each game. If you got a bad roll on these tables, the
owner wanted it to be your fault, not the fault of the equipment. Each table’s rails received a wiping with a
damp cloth. Finally, he would take a
table brush and brush out the cloth so that the nap ran from the head of the
table down to the foot. Performing this
little ritual every day allowed him to see the wear and tear on the tables and
know when a re-covering was in order or if a particular style had an odd wear
mark that he could point out to the factory rep or to a potential
customer.

With the tables ready, he checked
the rest of the equipment. House cues
were checked for tips and bumpers. Any
bumpers that were missing were replaced and tips were tuned if out of
shape. Ferrules were cleaned of the blue
ring of chalk usually deposited by a beginner not knowing the proper method for
chalking the tip. The shafts were
cleaned with a touch of lighter fluid to keep them slick and free of dirt and
hand oils. Small dents in shafts were
carefully steamed or sanded out. Any
cues with really bad dings caused by beginners and “bangers” were culled out. These were eventually donated to a local
retirement home with a pool table. Each
set of balls were inspected and cleaned regularly. The chalk box was set out and overly used
cubes were thrown out. (Unlike most
rooms, the chalk was handed out separately from the set of balls to reduce the
amount of cleaning needed on the equipment.
One piece per table, unless requested by the players, was
provided.) After finishing his
pre-opening ritual, the owner looked across the room and smiled broadly. The room had been open for thirteen years and
looked brand new. He believed in
preventive maintenance and the value of it showed.

The chef came in about eight thirty
most mornings, usually with a couple of bags of groceries in his arms. He stopped at the open-air market on his way
in each morning to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables and, occasionally,
something that would really spark his creativity. The direct result of this stop was,
invariably, a daily special that was a delight to the palate and healthy for the
body. He and the owner both had to watch
their diets carefully, they shared an affinity for high cholesterol and high
blood pressure, and the chef took it as one of his most important
responsibilities.

At nine o’clock sharp, the owner
would unlock the front door and retreat to the front counter to finish his
coffee and read the paper. He read
everything, including the classifieds, for a couple of reasons. The first was that he loved to read and the
newspaper had been a daily ritual since he was ten years old. More importantly, he felt it was his duty to
be knowledgeable on current events. He
was frequently called upon to settle debates and wagers among the regulars on
the most inane subjects imaginable. If
he had to be Solomon, he intended to have as many facts as he could muster at
all times. It was another aspect of
being a small businessman. If you were
looked on as an authority, you had better be one as often as possible or risk
losing a customer to someone that was perceived to be. The owner being right or wrong didn’t matter
as much as the perception of his being right or wrong.

While the owner was reading his
paper, a group of the regulars came in, one at a time, within five minutes of
each other. The five men, all in their
fifties and sixties, most retired, all loud and opinionated, were known
collectively as the “Mayor’s Club.” They
were all locals, had lived in town their entire lives, knew nearly everyone in
the area and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. And the company of anyone who would bother to
listen to their opinions which was what had earned them their collective
nickname; they seemed to be small-town, local politicos. Individually they were known as Schmoe, Axe,
Dago, Duke and Manilow. After their
morning breakfast and bull session, there would be a round robin game of
backgammon, one pocket, nine ball or straight pool all for stakes that never
amounted to more than a couple of dollars passed between friends. The game would usually end up just in time
for the mayors to head home for lunch with their respective wives. Later, one or another might make an
appearance for a game with real money on the line. But never with each other. The morning game and coffee klatch was their
ritual of long term friendship.

Other regulars came in between late
morning and early afternoon during the week.
These were players that also had real jobs. They were businessmen and women,
self-employed and employees of large and small corporations. They were in their mid-twenties and early
seventies and everywhere in between. The
commonality they shared was the game.
All of them loved and played pool or billiards or snooker and couldn’t
do it for a living. They made time in
their schedules and their daily lives to slip in to the poolroom at least once
or twice a week to play, sometimes during their lunch hour, sometimes by
playing hooky from work or some other responsibility. Some would eat while they were playing,
savoring the taste of a wonderful meal while playing a match or working on
their game. Others would only
concentrate on the task at hand; the shot they faced or the one their opponent
faced. They were far too into their game
to eat.

Many of these people had their own
pool table at home. Some had more
expensive tables than the room did. But
they still made the trip to the poolroom to play and practice on these tables,
with these other players. They did it
because they loved the aspects of the game that can only be found in a
poolroom; the people watching, the competition, a chance to play for money and
test one’s game against strangers, friends and acquaintances. In some cases, it was to develop their “home
field” advantage or get a feel for the subtle nuances of tables they would be
playing on in an upcoming league event or tournament. Finding anything that helped the game was
always worth a trip.

Regulars also came in around the
same time that weren’t players. Back in
the snack bar area, there was a regular lunch crowd that came in to see what
the Chef had created for the daily special.
The lunch regulars came from local businesses and were of the same stock
as the players. Every age and social
class, every manner of worker and manager was represented during the course of
a week. All were called by name and
called each other by name, first names or nicknames, only. In this environment, they were all equal in
social stature and in business, indeed in all measurements of life. They chatted about the food, the weather,
current events, sports, whatever they felt like. Just walking through the snack bar during the
lunchtime rush, you could hear conversations about any aspect of the
world. The crowd was always enough to
fill every chair at every table.
Everyone sat with everyone else and this helped the conversations to
take place.

Then there were the railbirds. They tended to come in beginning around
lunchtime and remain anywhere from twenty minutes, just long enough to eat, to
past closing time at two in the morning.
These were the watchers of pool, the sweaters. Some of them knew the game very well, could
tell who the real players were after watching just one stroke of the cue. They knew who would fold and who could handle
the pressure of a money game. They knew
who was playing their normal speed and who was holding back so as to get the
wager or spot they wanted. They knew
these things because they had seen enough over the years to just tell, or at
least make a highly educated wager, on the outcome of various occurrences. Some of the railbirds were players of some
repute at one time or another, some still played a fair game and some had never
played. But they all shared the same
love for sweating a match with a wager on the outcome.

A few of the railbirds knew almost
nothing about the game but a case could be made that this group didn’t know
much about anything. Pool, like most
things, can be learned through observation if you know how and what to look
for. If you don’t know what to look for
or how to observe you won’t learn anything and there was always one railbird
who fit that description. Most of the
time, those in the know would tolerate the unknowing because it helped to
validate their own knowledge of the game.
Sometimes they would bait the unknowing clown just so they would have
something to laugh about, after the fact.
A good scam on a dimwit railbird would be retold numerous times over the
ensuing days; in the snack bar, at a table during a no-money game or at the
rail of another match. It helped to pass
the time between games or between wagers.

Late in the afternoon or early in
the evening, the money players began coming in the poolroom. There were usually money matches going on at
any time of the day or night. But the
real money players usually came in the evening.
Some had put in a full day of work and were looking for an escape from
the usual evening at home or a way to earn a little extra money. Some had put in a day at college and were
looking for the same. Some had slept
until early in the afternoon because they had been up all night the night
before playing pool for money. Those
that had won were back to keep their streak alive. Those that had lost were there to recoup
their losses from the night, or nights, before.
The money players all had one thing in common; they all wanted the big
score. They all wanted the chance to
play for big money when their stroke was smooth and sure, when difficult shots
looked easy, when no safety was inescapable.
They wanted to win and win big.
But if they couldn’t win big, they simply wanted to win. And if they couldn’t win, they wanted a
chance to play. As one of the mayors was
often heard to say, “The only thing worse than playing for money and losing, is
not playing for anything!”

The Night Man came in to relieve the
owner every evening between five and six o’clock. He would have dinner in the snack bar and
then make his way to the front counter.
The owner didn’t always leave when the Night Man came in; he ran leagues
on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
The leagues provided healthy competition for the players who wanted it
without the wagering aspect. There were
some players in the league who were every bit as good as the better money
players in the room. They liked their
pool to be unblemished with the money that some players used as a way of
keeping score. The leagues also provided
healthy competition for those who liked to wager on their skills against the
skills of others. The league allowed
them to see other players’ games; some of them might be up for a friendly, or
not-so-friendly, money match afterward.
Finally, the leagues provided an opportunity for members of the pool
community to socialize with other members.
If you loved the game, the league was an intense three or four hour
period to play, watch, learn, talk about, argue and fight about pool. Never is a poolroom noisier, with
predominantly friendly sounds, than it is during league night. For the owner, leagues were one more revenue
stream, one more way of building and keeping his business, his players.

As the night wore on, the Night Man
would be kept very busy. So many people
would be there that there would be a wait, sometimes for over an hour, for an
available table. The list of groups
waiting was constantly updated, names were called, tabs were settled at the front
counter and the tables rented to the next waiting group. Occasionally, the Night Man would be asked to
run a customer’s credit or debit card for far more than the accumulated table
time in order to settle a wager on the table.
The poolroom was always glad to do that as they could charge an extra
dollar for doing so. That made it
cheaper than the ATM machine across the street and still brought in some
additional revenue. It also made for
more road players willing to stop in and play; no one ever had to worry about
getting paid if plastic was available.
As a result, this poolroom always had action.

Slowly, the noise level in the
poolroom would begin to dissipate, imperceptibly at first, until, around one in
the morning, with the snack bar closed for business, the majority of sound came
from the balls on the tables. By this
time, about half of the tables would have games going on them. The rest would get their covers replaced, as
the games would end. Finally, with only
two or three tables going, the Open sign would be turned off and the door would
be locked. Whatever railbirds still in
attendance would be sweating the matches along with the players, wagering on
the outcome of each match or individual games, or sometimes, on individual
shots. Often, the railbirds would find
among them one of the players’ backers, wagering on his man on the side with
the spectators, too. (It was men in
these two roles. The occasion of a woman
playing a high-stakes money match was extremely uncommon in every poolroom
around the country. And the backer was
almost never a woman either. Perhaps
poolrooms of the future will have coed road player / backer teams.) This provided the backer with the opportunity
to make more money. Any side bets he
placed were not subject to the player’s cut; it was all profit or loss for
him.

Finally, the last ball would drop on
the last game of the night. Cues would
be broken down, wiped off and placed carefully back in their cases. Wagers would be paid off, discretely in most
cases. The loser would count out the
bills, early in the evening fives and tens at this hour twenties, fifties and
hundreds, and either hand the wad to the winner or drop it on the table. This last gesture was usually meant as one of
resignation, a way to surrender. Handing
the bills over instead of tossing them on the table meant you were leaving with
your self-respect intact and wanted a rematch on another night. And the winner would always accommodate you,
maybe with a different spot or a different game with different stakes but he
would always give the loser a chance to win his money back.

The last players would settle up
their table time and bar tabs. The
winners would tip the Night Man for staying past closing time to allow the
match to continue, make one final trip to the rest room and head out into the
night.

Like most poolrooms, stories of
matches that continued for more than one day were legendary. This room was no different. The regulars loved to tell the story of the
match between Alan Hopkins, a road player with a national reputation, and
Stumpy Wheeler the local one-pocket legend that would play anyone for
anything. He and Hopkins started a match
on a Monday evening that continued until early Wednesday morning. The combatants broke for some sleep and
reconvened Wednesday afternoon and played until Thursday night around midnight
when Stumpy won two racks in a row at five hundred dollars each. When the dust had cleared, Hopkins had only won a hundred dollars. The only reason they continued for that long
was that Hopkins
couldn’t believe he couldn’t put Stumpy, a man with only one leg playing on
crutches, away and he called quits when he realized he needed to be at a
tournament two states away on Friday evening.
Until the day he passed away, Stumpy referred to Hopkins as the only man who had ever beaten
him and not given him a chance to win back his money.

The Night Man would put the covers
on the last of the tables, count and close out the cash register, transmit the
credit card receipts, run and print the computer reports for the day and put
the money in the safe. After a quick
walk through the building, making sure all entrances were locked and no one had
passed out somewhere in the room or was sleeping in the john, he would turn out
the lights, set the alarm and lock up.

The parking lot was finally
empty. The poolroom was dark and quiet,
resting after hosting a day of the best and worst shots ever seen. It would do the same thing again in a few
hours just as it had every day for the last thirteen years. And it still smelled like homemade soup.

6 comments:

I was trying to remember if I have ever been in a poolroom in my life. If I have, I do not remember it. So, the context was not a relevant to me. You paint a pretty good picture though. Not bad at all.

Brian, I sent you a comment via email but now I can't find it anywhere. Plus, I had notification of a comment you made on my site that never showed and when I went back to look for the notification it was gone and the email I sent was gone with it.

This has happened a time or two before and I always figured it was something I did but whatever the cause, let me know if you know what I'm talking about. I somehow no longer have your email address or any record of our past correspondence.